Introduction For Af ricans to live and thrive as a people we must, as a nation, commit social and cultural suicide, so that parts of our nation come out of merely being the Masses and Grassroots. We must resurrect, reclaim, recreate, reawaken, embrace and nurture the belief and culture which lie deep in our hearts and minds, which we achieved through a fierce and protracted liberation struggle, based on the belief that: ‘…South Af rica belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity...’ For us to do this we need a program of action to rebuild and develop the nation and the country. That program must have as its anchor the Freedom Charter and our National Constitution, both of which – it seems to me – must be the means to strive to understand and to achieve the cultural principles and expressions which must walk the alleys and streets of our townships, the footpaths of our rural areas, and the highways leading to our suburbs. Integral to those projects must be the means to conscientize and promote anti- corruption principles, the culture of entitlement, and the culture Basic Income Grant, Communities, Indigenous Knowledge Systems – Imagining the New South African Society By Mongane Serote | Opinion 74 T H E T H I N K E R NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES The basis for that must be that the people themselves must reach consensus, accept and take responsibility for the projects to be implemented, in order to ensure the success of programs which can completely transform the lives of the poor, the unemployed, and the politically and economically discriminated against. of dependency and expectation to be saved by a messiah culture. That program must also have, as its base, what is known by the people, what the people have identified as a problem, and what they have identified and understand as that which will transform their lives for the better. On the basis of consensus, decisions must be reached as to what exists in communities, what has the potential to develop the people so that they can develop things. The basis for that must be that the people themselves must reach consensus, accept and take responsibility for the projects to be implemented, in order to ensure the success of programs which can completely transform the lives of the poor, the unemployed, and the politically and economically discriminated against. Besides the above, emanating f rom the iARi and iIKSSA conference on food security held in Pretoria in November 2019, it would be essential to create a program of action on food security with the following objectives: 1. How do we turn the tide where 20% of South Af rica’s commercial farmers contribute 80% of the country’s total food production? 2. How do we work with government in addressing the challenge that the majority of the farms bought by government for restitution/ redistribution to black farms after 1994 are unproductive and non-functional? 3. How do we encourage households in South Af rica to produce vegetables in their backyards, rooftops, or window sills in urban areas? This initiative could address the challenging situations where households use 70% to 80% of their income to purchase food (Hendrick 2014, iIKSSA Trust report). Covid-19 has dramatized the spectres of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination of the masses of people in our society in a most cruel manner. It has exposed that those who are black, poor, and marginalised are forever the most vulnerable. We have no choice as a nation but to fundamentally change and transform that circumstance and trajectory, beginning now and into the long-distant future after the Covid-19 pandemic. We have, as a people, and as a nation, overcome great adversities, such as when we overcame the colonial and apartheid regime in our country. As suggested above, we have laid the reference basis for the emergence of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Af rican cultural base and expression. That expression, as if a bonfire, caught up and raged across the continent, and the world, as flames which sought to erase imperialism, colonialism, tribalism, racism, and neo-colonialism. Then, there was a f resh air blowing, as if a storm, over the continent to fan the energy and spirit for the emergence of the rebirth, recreation, reawakening of Af rica, the Af rican diaspora, and humanity. International multilateral institutions listened carefully to that Af rican voice and discourse, but an anti-Af rican Renaissance and Pan Af rican discourse also emerged, targeting the Af rican leaders who pioneered the NEPAD project, which would become the steam engine for the renaissance and Pan Af rican cultural discourse in South Af rica, on the continent, and among the Af rican diaspora worldwide. In that time, the cultural concepts of the Af rican Renaissance and Pan Af rican objectives were not only on our lips, but emanated f rom within us as a deep cultural belief, conviction, and commitment to the cultural expression of Af ricans. The question we must pose, using hindsight, about this is: how deep and how broad was this cultural expression among the masses? How should the history of the liberation struggles deepen an Af rican consciousness which would exert that as a cultural expression which would protect and defend the gains of the struggle? 75V o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES Besides that, let us also not overlook and discard other achievements which we gained in the past fifteen years (1994–2009) or so. The Pan Af rican and Af rican Renaissance cultural expressions, which were part and parcel of the national democratic revolution, would have been linked to revolutionary processes nurtured by the liberation struggle concept among the masses, and on the continent as a whole. ‘Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Ba Bang’, as part of this principle, is the expression of our National Constitution. In the same spirit of the above-mentioned gains and achievements, we must note that we have almost transformed the landscape of our country f rom the early nineties to the present time. What reminds us of our unfinished business is the spread and sprawl of shanty towns and poverty-stricken rural areas, especially of the former Bantustan and township areas. It is also that the majority of the people, who are held on the necks by a tight vice grip of poverty, discrimination and unemployment, who scream ‘…I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe…’ While it is not only black people, black people are in the majority. We must know, as democrats, that negative culture does not and cannot augur well for our non-racial, non- sexist and democratic national culture. It is almost late in the day of the history of non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy to still cite that evidence, which is so glaring under the sky. Whichever direction one takes in our country, one is bound to see the many RDP houses, which sprawl and spread across different myriad landscapes, across flat lands, slope spaces, and steep mountains in both rural and urban areas. Those are the achievements of our struggle which we must still claim. However, we note also that they are infested with grave challenges. They are there, these RDP houses, people live in them! The question is: how, besides the fact of their having provided and promoted the concept of shelter for all, have they transformed the lives of the poor in the urban centres, especially, and also in the rural areas? This question, while inspired by the potential driven by the democratic government to address the quality of life of those who were impoverished and dehumanised by the apartheid system, raises the question: did we succeed to address those conditions holistically – economically, socially, culturally, through inf rastructure, and even politically? If so, how so? If not, how do we conduct an audit which defines this move by government as noble, but which answers the question, why is this still an unfinished business? They have changed the lives of some poor people, as has the inf rastructure to distribute ARVs, as have the social welfare grants which have intervened in the lives of millions of retired, poor, unemployed, and socially marginalised citizens. There are the lives of single parents, whose children and themselves had to be rescued through the social welfare grants. These programs of grants have shifted the quality of lives of the recipients, f rom here to there. As also have the RDP houses and the ARV program. Is it f rom poverty to quality of life? Or: would it be that these were programs which were meant to develop the people who are pinned down under the three scourges of poverty, unemployment and social marginalisation, all of which are apartheid’s legacy, so that the people themselves begin to develop things? Which proximities and which institutions should the masses of the grassroots have developed themselves, after which programs should have been accessible to them? In which way should they have empowered themselves, especially f rom the basis that they have been a resource which kept them afloat against the greatest and most brutal odds? Which resources would have been twin creations with their organic knowledge creations for the interventions referred to above? In other words, what education systems must be put in place which would complement their own and enhance the organic education and knowledge inherent in the people? Statistics say there are sixty-million South Af ricans. Certainly, there will be more after the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the nation and on the continent. The issue of the continent is also the issue which we must factor into the thinking and planning in our country. If we do, we will have no space in our consciousness for xenophobia. Migration is a human factor, but also, it is now over five and a half decades since we declared to all to know, that we are uniting Af rica. If f rom a bird’s eye view we scan both the rural and urban areas, the eye being focused among the poor, and the question which we seek to answer being: what is the superstructure which we together with the inhabitants of this space must create here to 76 T H E T H I N K E R NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES The best guardian and possibility of this is our constitution and both the superstructure and the myriad of institutions which oversee it. fundamentally transform these spaces to achieve their being habitable and to create possibility for quality of life where it never existed? What must dominate our collective minds as we scan that view? In other words, given the backdrop of the liberation struggle, what values, what politics, what historical understanding, what cultural reference would have to guide how we scan and how we ponder and what vision emerges as we perceive what is there facing us and what is to be done? There are the masses, there are the grassroots, there are the lives which voluntarily stepped forward and joined the organs of civil society, the liberation army, the labour movements, the liberation movements, youth and women organisations, and entered the struggle without looking backwards. Even as these are not completed projects, interventions have been made in this way in both the rural and urban areas through sanitation, electricity and water supply – all massive projects indeed, which are a pointer to the possibilities of serious interventions. Again, these are the universities of the developing nation, which is also, our continent. These are possibilities to nurture the foundation and emergence of a cultural expression of patriotism, a humane, progressive and optimistic cultural consciousness for the future of our country and nation. The challenge is how to nurture a common culture which is part and parcel of everyday cultural understanding and practice? Have we, as a people, achieved a common understanding as to what is culture and how it is nurtured? All these achievements, incomplete as they are, are known by the people, they are the base to learn f rom and to take off f rom in order to advance the reconstruction, development and transformation of the South Af rican nation. In the same manner as these parts of the superstructure in townships and the rural areas of our country are the evidence of an attempt at the transformation of the geopolitical landscape of the nation, they are also a glaring example that the nation is still in the grip of colonial and apartheid division, reflecting the institutional presence of a diabolical past system within the emerging non-racial, non-sexist and democratic nation. The best guardian and possibility of this is our constitution and both the superstructure and the myriad of institutions which oversee it. We must keep this matter on our national agenda, we must still pose the question: how is a cultural expression and consciousness owned by a people, by a nation? Which superstructures of the nation must drive this urgent and necessary project and understanding which must forever claim and forever rescue the gains of our non-racial, non-sexist, democratic cultural consciousness? The people experience their benefits daily. Put together, the collective people’s experiences have inherent in them the potential to transform the lives of what Covid-19 has so painfully exposed and dramatised, in the whole world, within Af rica and in the black rural and urban areas of the world. South Af rica, were you witness to the long long queues at the supermarkets; the long long queues for social welfare grants; the long long queues for pensions and at the taxi ranks? Soon, it will be long long queues in hospitals for beds and long long queues at cemeteries too. That is the challenge facing our nation now, as the Covid-19 pandemic rages and peaks across the nation. What must be done? To implement the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the rural and township communities through the length and breadth of our country; to implement processes, programs and projects based on the concepts of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), Vuk’uzenzele, and acquired skills using the Basic Income Grant (BIG) as an incentive and in the process identify relevant and appropriate audited skills in the communities for this purpose. To kickstart this process, the plan must be to mobilise 77V o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES While there is a myriad of causes of food insecurity in the country, the keycause can be attributed to the arid and semi-arid conditions that exist within the country. The average annual rainfall is less than 600mm. These arid conditions have adverse effects on food production and expose many households to problems of food and nutritional insecurity. a small number of IKS holders and practitioners (for example, two f rom each province for starters) on the basis of the nine IKS languages of our country for a brainstorm session and conference on the five categories of IKS. This must begin with the food and medicinal plant security project. Besides the fact that the food, herbal and medicinal plants can be projects in both the rural and urban areas, it is also a fact that knowledge about them resides among the people, knowledge about both the indigenous and non- indigenous plants, herbs and foods, their use and their cocktails, which unfortunately, is being harvested because all of it is unprotected, let alone valued, by the departments which should be in partnerships with communities. The objective of the conference must be to shift the IKS discourse in the country, f rom being only a theoretical discourse or only related to and defining the IKS Healing System (IKSH), as the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) has done for the past fifteen or so years. As IKS is elevated to theory, it must also be elevated to the level of practice, the basis and push being of and by the people supported by the government. That is so that it can contribute to the economy, to social transformation, to national cultural diversity and the intervention by digitisation and innovation. Beginning with access to cell phones, which is a basic 4IR means of production with the objective to eventually orientate the masses, the grassroots digitally, we must mobilise the youth and elders into a partnership. The youth to introduce the digitisation history and culture, the elders to lead and introduce the history, culture and IKS processes, so that the youth can answer the question: who am I? The objective, in engaging in IKS thus, must be to at all times ensure contribution to a Vuk’uzenzele consciousness of communities and nation building. As also it must be to promote, protect and innovate IKS so that it must yield positive, humane and progressive historical, cultural, political, social and economic expressions nationally. The history of research into IKS, as initiated and unfolded by the Portfolio Committee of Parliament of Arts, Culture, Languages, Science and Technology (PACLST) has thus far yielded the result that there are five main categories of IKS. These are social, institutional, technological, biodiversity and liberation processes. The suggested conference must be convened to validate and verify these categories through practice. As also, it must be an intervention to empower the communities to engage the culture of Vuk’uzenzele through food and medicinal security processes, programs and projects f rom an IKS position. There are diverse and myriad forms of industries which can emanate f rom this project, which must be initially engaged as pilot projects, as a study is also conducted about those projects in the past which did not work. Food security, including IKSH As in other parts of Af rica, food insecurity and malnutrition are major problems facing South Af rica. While there is a myriad of causes of food insecurity in the country, the key cause can be attributed to the arid and semi-arid conditions that exist within the country. The average annual rainfall is less than 600mm. These arid conditions have adverse effects on food production and expose many households to problems of food and nutritional insecurity. (iIKSSA 2020 conference) ‘…However, local communities in South Af rica have, over the years, developed different food security strategies and mechanisms for surviving in these conditions. These strategies include various technologies of food production, processing, preservation and storage that have not received much attention f rom policy makers and extension workers. They tend to be underrated and their potential has not been documented and exploited for sustainable community livelihood…’ (Sibanda, 2004). Research conducted on what was called the Af rican Primary Institution (API) by iARi, funded by both 78 T H E T H I N K E R NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and the National Heritage Council (NHC) has indicated that even as the imperialism, colonialism and the apartheid system focused on the destruction of the API, the so called Af rican extended family, with the objective to destroy Af rican organisation, programs and social foundations and communities, the IKS institution has been most resilient. Besides indicating resilience, given how the imperialist, colonialist and apartheid systems not only continuously, but also with a focused attention, put in place policies and legislation (e.g. pass laws, group areas acts, etc.) which were intended to and resulted in the near destruction of this API, it continued to sustain its value systems, which are based on the concept and philosophy of ‘motho ke motho ka batho ba bang’ – a fundamental IKS institution and philosophy (iARi). Given the understanding that the API is the foundation and base of any nation on the continent, iARi’s intention and ambition to contribute to the strengthening of the diversity of the emerging South Af rican nation, which is based on the strategic objective of the liberation struggle, and which is also to let emerge a non-racial, non- sexist, democratic and prosperous nation, it is understandable to claim that the API is still the basis for anchoring community projects for the transformation of those communities. This suggestion implies that a juxtaposing of a project of food and medicinal plant security, the API, schools and universities (UNISA and UJ among others) and communities with the Basic Income Grant (BIG) project has a potential to prime interests in community building projects. This must be based on, on the one hand, the BIG as an incentive for skills audits in communities as stated above, and on the other, as a program to kick start and encourage cohesion processes within communities, through both BIG and the stokvels (an urban IKS innovation investment process and culture). Besides that, it would be the potential to establish a sustainable social locomotive process, which mobilises individuals and communities in the rural areas and townships. If on the one hand there are community food, medicinal plant and herbal gardens in communities, as also there are provincial food, medicinal and herbal plant gardens and nurseries. As these projects merge and yield gains in communities, the land question and the housing projects must be on the agenda, discussed by all relevant structures f rom within the Government structures, the private sector, and the communities, including also high schools and universities. The superstructure for these projects must be perceived as being part and parcel of the inf rastructure projects of different government development processes and projects, e.g. Arts and Culture, Science and Innovation, Trade and Industry, Social Development, COGTA, Education and Health. While on the one hand, there must be a concerted program and process of skills audit as an incentive for BIG, and for engaging in self-reliance and self-upliftment processes and programmes by the communities, in a word, Vuk’uzenzele of and in communities and villages, another focused project must be that of the complete eradication of illiteracy. It must also be an urgent project which is focused on contributing to the development and upgrading of at least two Af rican languages, namely Sesotho and isiZulu. This while not stopping the processes of development of the other remaining Af rican languages. This is an urgent matter which the Pan South Af rican Language Board (PanSALB) must engage with the Department of Education (DoE) on the basis of the new community-orientated education curriculum which I will briefly refer to later. Kiswahili, which is the official AU language, has also been put on the national agenda, as the government has done, through the DoE so far. The government- funded PanSALB and the Kiswahili institute based at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) must be encouraged to enter into partnership with the Kiswahili institute, based in Tanzania, as a deliberate intention and objective to contribute to the unity of our continent on the basis of a promotion of a Pan Af rican and Af rican Renaissance Cultural expression and the emancipation of the Af rican voice and culture. The IKS curriculum for education must in the near future factor digitisation among the youth and the elders. The youth are steeped in this culture, in its present and future, and the elders are steeped in the history, the present and the future. How will the BIG- Communities-IKS, digitisation, the youth, IKS and the elders transform the culture of the masses and the 79V o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES This is a category of Indigenous Knowledge which is pregnant with bounds of possibilities for creativity if it is synergised with digitisation. Culture, spirituality, languages, heritage, and the arts also fall under this category. culture of the grassroots into and as a contribution to the cultural diversity of our nation? The youth excel in digitisation, but will also be encouraged if their skills in this regard are formally recognised as they are engaged and related to the Reconstruction and Development Program of the country. On the other hand, formally engaging the elders in the history, culture and social circumstances of the communities and the nation would be a social and cultural investment, to conscientize them to the information and data which is inherent in the digitisation culture, the objective being how to use the data and knowledge acquired to enhance and to innovate IKS where and when it is necessary. The DoE’s new complementary education takes into consideration the fact that indigenous education has existed and continues to have a place in South Af rican communities. This new form of education will focus learning on Self, Community, the Country and the World. The certificate will be an education that encompasses both indigenous and local knowledge and embeds scientific knowledge wherever possible and/or necessary. The initial basis for the take-off of this new form of education will be, at all times, to do a skills audit in communities, to empower the participating individuals, and to use the acquired skills for the further development of communities. As one educator stated: ‘…One of the prominent features of this education will be a focus on entrepreneurship f rom both the indigenous and western systems. This new system certificate will groom learners to participate in the economy, governance and make decisions f rom informed positions. The education system will also focus on learning how to deal with social issues in their own communities. The education will be largely project based…’ (Morongoa Masemola, 2020). It is this approach which makes it urgent that in the first place, the existing mine, the IKS categories are unpacked, verified and validated so that they are the basis for the release of the incubation and innovation reference of IKS. Validation and verifying of the 5 IKS categories The foundation for the IKS is the 5 categories mentioned above, namely: Social, Technological, Institutional, Biodiversity and Liberation processes. The categories were yielded by the 13 years of a national research program which was conducted by the Portfolio Committee of Arts, Culture, Languages, Science and Technology Committee (PACLST) of the Democratic Parliament (1995–2008), in partnership with historically disadvantaged universities, the Science Councils of the country, named above and relevant Government Departments, IKS Holders and Practitioners, International Organisations like UNESCO, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Indigenous Knowledge Systems Categories Social Issues Taking digitisation into consideration and harnessing this category, social issues will be explored. How must we create the science of harnessing its content so that it must result in a revolution? A rupture f rom equating a mono-knowledge, Western knowledge, as civilisation… of recognising that there is as diverse knowledge in the world as there are diverse people, cultures, heritages, histories, languages, beliefs, and so on. All of these are the content of the social issue’s category. One of the steam engines which must complement the relationship between social issues and digitisation, is a simultaneous interpretation facility and a language lab which must be anchored in the youth and the elders. This category can facilitate, create and open up communication among all people, in South Af rica, Southern Af rica, the continent and even the diaspora and the world at large, especially if Kiswahili is also 80 T H E T H I N K E R NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES factored in. Very quickly, the combined teaching of Af rican languages and technology must be instituted, through a drill and practice method, which can contribute to the minimisation of illiteracy in villages and townships as also it becomes the non-racialisation of Pan Af ricanism. We must note that research emanating f rom the Af rican Union Language Academy states that there are seventeen Af rican languages on the continent, rather than 2,000 (Kwesi Prah-Sala Language Seminar, 2018). In as much as we can say, there are two Af rican Languages in South Af rica, rather than nine, namely Sesotho and isiNguni. This must not mean that we are doing away with Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, isiZulu, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Tshivenda, Tsonga, Khoi and San. This is a category of Indigenous Knowledge which is pregnant with bounds of possibilities for creativity if it is synergised with digitisation. Culture, spirituality, languages, heritage, and the arts also fall under this category. Indigenous Knowledge Institutions The institutions exist, are being utilised, and form the consciousness, emotions, spiritual orientation, and physical being of Af ricans. Besides their having to be juxtaposed with the 21st century objective reality, it is important to unpack these institutions, with the objective of identifying within them, what must be retained, and what must be discarded. The objective here must not be to integrate them with other knowledge systems as a priority, but to continuously ask: what f rom them can contribute to empower and fundamentally transform the rural and township areas, moving f rom what the communities know to creating new ideas? But also, we must ask and answer the question: how will they contribute to the human experience, which is humane? Individuals as institutions, for instance, malome and rakgadi, as well as the family and communities, bongaka, bogosi, bogwera, bojale, letsema, masiela, lobola, etc. are the institutions which must be revisited with the view to promote social engineering for quality of life and progress. If we approach these processes informed by an understanding, conviction and commitment that there are skills, expertise, positive values which inform social processes in these concepts within the communities, we will find the resources for the engagement of the projects. Indigenous Technology What is technology? If it is the means to mobilise resources, both human and material, and if it is the knowledge repeated through generations to ensure the quality of all forms of life and their perpetuity, then there are more questions which, if answered, will further create knowledge and enable the human race to access the knowledge of the universe. We therefore cannot talk about technology and not also talk about science. What and which is the science in IKS? How must we identify the technologies within IKS which have the potential to prevent the reinvention of wheels, while also stimulating innovations which will allow for sustainability through a careful, creative and concerted unpacking of social, ecological and economic content, with the objective of ensuring the continuity of the regeneration of resources and their container, the earth? Before we even think about sputnik science, it is most imperative that we focus on the fact that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is imminent and must be compatible with the survival of life, be couched within progressive culture, and be humane. From a calabash, to a house, to both social and natural sciences, IKS as a science, if contextualised within Af rican perspectives, promises all kinds of possibilities. For instance, a technology exists within IKS to cleanse and heal the institutionalised terrible psychic and spiritual wounds of violence, racism, and sexism inflicted by the apartheid system on all South Af ricans. Indeed, sooner rather than later, we must, as we already do, verify, validate and examine IKS against the backdrop of sputnik science and technology. Biodiversity The 3 Bs – Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and Bioprospecting – are a content of this category. Inherent in this category is the preservation, conservation and stimulation of the ecosystem, the universe, and all forms of life. The enhancement of IKS in this category must be with the vision and objective of encompassing the renewal, rebirth, reclamation, and furtherance of Pan Af ricanism within the whole of the Af rican continent, the Af rican Diaspora, and the global context. The challenge and dialectic facing us as human beings here is: on the one hand, we must understand and be part of the self-perpetuating 81V o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES cycles of the universe, and, on the other, in line with the IKS Af rican story of creation, we must understand and engage the fact that it does seem, for now, that our consciousness, which produces thought, which produces expression, which must produce organised and planned action, is unique to the human species, and therefore, that it must be trained and disciplined to be in tandem with the cycles of the universe, as also it becomes constructively creative with them, because we came here to be creative beings. If the lid is lifted f rom Bongaka, Bojale and Bogwera, we will discover millions of men and women who have survived the terror of the Apartheid System, who have been revolutionaries. Liberation Processes Except for a few islands around the continent, all of the continent has been liberated politically. Taking into consideration that most of the Liberation Movements which were responsible for this achievement, which have their roots in the 15th century and which also emerged in the 19th century, sought to resolve issues of tribalism, racism, sexism, poverty, as simultaneously their strategic objective was to rid their countries and people of the burden of imperialism, colonialism and the apartheid systems, how must both the successes and failures of the strategies and tactics, programs, processes and projects be within the reach and access of the masses? How can this category be shared with peoples of the world to, on the one hand, contribute to the creation of a peaceful, secure and f ree world, as also on the other hand, they contribute to the historical, political, social, cultural, artistic, economic and heritage development of the continent and the world? It is not only the strategies and tactics which were used to conduct the struggles for liberation which must be studied, but also the various methods used. How, why and what did they achieve? Why were they founded? There are those countries which were liberated on the basis of non-violence and negotiations, and there are also those which were liberated on the basis of armed struggles, negotiations and/or international interventions. There are a mixed bag of strategies and tactics among the Af rican Diaspora, which can contribute immensely to the transformation of the world as we know it now. The stories for creativity abound in these categories, which can be film, theatre, music, dance, and different writing genres. They are also subjects for history and culture and a contribution, as being part and parcel of the education system, to a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, multilateral and peaceful world. All of these categories demand that the objective to enrich the diverseness of Af rican experience – through its recreation, reawakening, rebirth, reconstruction and revitalising – after it being buried for centuries, must really liberate the human experience. Conclusion (We believe that) ‘…South Af rica belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity...’ This statement can no longer be just theory. It is urgent that the South Af rican nation emancipate the Af rican voice within the diverse context of our country: historically, politically, culturally, socially and, equally importantly, economically. While this reality must be buttressed by the diverseness of our nation, through implementation, by legislation and superstructures, Af ricans must lead those processes of the political, social, economic, heritage and cultural liberation. To do so, in communities supported by the non-racial, non- sexist and democratic national culture as a whole, not as charity, but through material and human resources (without paternalism), with support and by endorsement, will not only be for the nation to experience the reality and evidence of the diversity of the South Af rican experience and culture, but will also be a national paradigm shift. At this passing long hour of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of ordinary South Af ricans, having experienced the drastic, dangerous and cruel impact of poverty on millions of citizens, can become a potential motive force for the fundamental transformation of that circumstance and of our nation. While BIG must be shaped to be an incentive for personal improvement, it must also motivate people to become activists in their own right, in their communities. Vuk’uzenzele, and ‘Motho ke motho ka batho ba bang’ must be the clarion call linked to BIG. 82 T H E T H I N K E R NEW CITIES NEW ECONOMIES